The 16 most infamous crimes in Bay Area history

November 11, 2013 |Kevin Fagan & Katie Dowd

Paul Sakuma/Associated Press 1984

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Perhaps the most confounding death mystery of all is one in which a body is never found. That is the enduring horror surrounding Kevin Collins, the 10-year-old boy who disappeared on his way home from basketball practice in 1984.

Kevin was last seen sitting on a bus bench at Oak Street and Masonic Avenue at 6:40 p.m. Despite a nationwide hunt and a cover story in Newsweek magazine, no solid suspect has ever emerged.

"He's deceased, " Kevin's despondent father, David Collins, finally told The Chronicle in 1996 as he closed the search center he ran for 12 years in an effort to find his boy. "If he could have, he would have come back to us."

Perhaps the most confounding death mystery of all is one in which a body is never found. That is the enduring horror surrounding Kevin Collins, the 10-year-old boy who disappeared on his way home from basketball practice in 1984.

Kevin was last seen sitting on a bus bench at Oak Street and Masonic Avenue at 6:40 p.m. Despite a nationwide hunt and a cover story in Newsweek magazine, no solid suspect has ever emerged.

"He's deceased, " Kevin's despondent father, David Collins, finally told The Chronicle in 1996 as he closed the search center he ran for 12 years in an effort to find his boy. "If he could have, he would have come back to us."